Texas’ transportation funding nightmare

“By 2025, only 21 percent of Texas’ roads will be in good or better condition.”

It’s not my prediction, it comes from the Center for Transportation Research at the University of Texas, and its contained in a story from the Houston Chronicle’s chron.com. The story should upset us. It should make us mad as hell and not going to take it any more.It begins:

During the next 20 years, the Texas Department of Transportation will need $315 billion to spend on the state’s roads and freeways for maintenance and construction just to keep traffic from getting worse, according to a report commissioned by the Texas Transportation Commission.

The gasoline tax, federal dollars and other fees, which provide almost all of TxDOT’s road funding, are expected to generate only about $160 billion during that same time.

I’ll link you through to the entire story and hope you go there because as Texas goes, so will a lot of other states go.

Perhaps the scariest thing about this story, and this situation, is the rhetoric. if you read it carefully you will feel there is something of an inevitability about the continuing deterioration of Texas roads and, at the same time, the continuing lack of solutions coming from politicians. There isn’t anything close to optimism from sources in the story, nor even a sense of urgency. If we could read the body language of this story we’d see someone who really doesn’t think he’s going to win.